Andrew Burstein

On his book Democracy's Muse: How Thomas Jefferson Became an FDR Liberal, a Reagan Republican, and a Tea Party Fanatic, All the While Being Dead

Cover Interview of April 12, 2017

Lastly

Here’s something I find revealing, though it is by no means
a scientific measure of anything. The portraits that grace the White House
Cabinet Room have always been thought to provide insights into the management style
or private inspiration of a sitting president. Presidents do decide which of
their predecessors will hang in this solemn location. The one presidential
portrait every chief executive from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama saw fit to
feature in the Cabinet Room is that of Thomas Jefferson. His name has been cited
in a good many State of the Union addresses over the years, and the Jefferson
Memorial has been the backdrop for many presidential announcements. The “camaraderie”
modern presidents feel when they visit with the symbolic Jefferson (similarly,
the symbolic Lincoln) most relates to two things: texts and stated principles. As
the featured author of the nation’s long-form birth certificate, the
Declaration of Independence, Jefferson is borrowed so as to “ground” us, to
convey a certain kind of moralism, as well as achievement, that is expressed
whenever the “American Dream” or “American exceptionalism” are touted in public
speeches.

My hope for this book is that it might jumpstart a
conversation or two about the dangers inherent in claiming knowledge of how
admired historical actors would regard modern political thinking, had they survived
to our time. It is absurd to insist that Jefferson is a partisan Republican or a
partisan Democrat, as we define the platforms of the organized political
parties of our century. Yet members of Congress have repeatedly attempted to claim
Jefferson for their party, as I illustrate in the book.

In Jefferson’s exceptionally eloquent First Inaugural
Address, March 4, 1801, he exhibits characteristics that express both liberal
humanist sentiments and small-government advocacy. “Let us restore to social
intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life
itself are but dreary things” makes him sound like a conscientious liberal,
seeking to remove social injustice. He says we should “unite in common efforts
for the common good.” But he also calls for “a wise and frugal Government,
which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise
free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not
take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.” That’s Reaganomics.

Franklin D. Roosevelt adored Jefferson for being the first
American statesman to stand up for the “little man,” the laboring citizen. FDR
was utterly convinced that the contest between Jefferson and Hamilton for the
soul of the republic was revived in the Depression-era crisis, in which the personal
greed of business moguls had damaged the lives of millions. For him, there’s “the
party of business” and “the party of the people.”

Yet for Reagan, too, Jefferson reliably stands on the side
of democracy. “Jefferson said that the people will not make a mistake if
they have all the facts,” he once wrote.

In the twentieth century, Jefferson had a greater hold on
Democrats; in the twenty-first century, he has a greater hold on Republicans,
who have found a slew of enticing quotes attesting to the inherent wisdom of
local citizens and the inherently oppressive tendencies of a large,
centralizing, regulating government. So, it certainly seems that Jefferson isn’t
done with us yet. As long as social justice remains in the hands of
legislators, the emotive founder Thomas Jefferson will have some role to play
in their deliberations.

[M]odern art still commonly refers to a rather narrow range of meaning and scope. It basically focuses on developments in Paris (Impressionism etc.) in the nineteenth century, and to selected Euro-American movements in the twentieth century (Cubism, Abstract Expressionism etc). But if we understand modernity as a socially transformative condition that was in force across much of the world from the nineteenth century on, how are we to understand artistic practices that were associated with these momentous changes?Iftikhar Dadi, Interview of March 26, 2012

The two world wars of the twentieth century were a product of the dislocations brought about of modernization in an environment where great power competition and the drive for hegemony were conducted primarily by violent means. Now that this era has passed in Europe and is receding in much of the Pacific rim, and hegemony achieved by force is no longer considered a legitimate ambition, the security requirements and fears of great powers should decline.Richard Ned Lebow, Interview of October 4, 2010